Travel Tip #135 (September 24th, 2006)

Don't wait until the last night of a six week vacation to do all of your souvenir shopping, especially if that last night is a Sunday night. You might think, "Hey I'm in a tourist-powered city, of course everything will be open on a Sunday night." But it won't. And you'll be left with nothing to show your friends and family when you get home, not even a cheap boomerang.

On the subject of unsolicited advice, I finally watched An Inconvenient Truth a few nights ago. I feel like the message got diluted a little bit by his back story, but I'm glad I saw it, even though it was a little depressing. But as Gore mentions, a lot of people go straight from ignorance to despair, skipping the "let's do something about this" phase. I'm attempting to do my part by encouraging everyone to watch the movie. If you can't (or don't want to) see it, you can wander over to www.climatecrisis.net and see what you can do to help solve the problem.

If I've only learned one thing this trip it's that every part of this world is beautiful and completely unique. I'd like to help keep it that way so my kids can see it some day too.